Strategy to enhance the wettability of bioacive paper-based sensors

This paper reports a potential method that can restore the wettability of bioactive paper-based sensors while maintaining their bioactivity. This study is driven by the need to increase the wettability of the antibody-loaded blood typing paper devices in order to increase the blood typing assaying speed using such paper devices. Plasma treatment is used to improve the wettability of bioactive paper; the protective effect of bovine serum albumin (BSA) to biomolecules against plasma deactivation is investigated. In the first stage, horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was used as a model biomolecule, because of the convenience of its quantifiable colorimetric reaction with a substrate. By using this protection approach, the inactivation of biomolecules on paper during the plasma treatment is significantly slowed down. This approach enables plasma treatment to be used for fabricating paper-based bioactive sensors to achieve strong wettability for rapid penetration of liquid samples or reagents. Finally, we demonstrate the use of plasma treatment to increase the wettability of antibody treated blood typing paper. After the treatment, the blood typing paper becomes highly wettable; it allows much faster penetration of blood samples into the plasma treated testing paper. Antibodies on the paper are still sufficiently active for blood typing and can report patients' blood type accurately.